


the joke of being taken seriously and family resemblances

by gaytimetraveller



Category: Persona 2, Persona 4
Genre: atlus can pry my extensive p4dan headcanons concerning tamami out of my cold dead hands, yknow i barely use anyones names but theyre there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 02:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13824666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytimetraveller/pseuds/gaytimetraveller
Summary: Everyone always told Tamami that she was just like her dad.





	the joke of being taken seriously and family resemblances

**Author's Note:**

> [picks up tamami uesugi out of p4dan] shes my daughter now. also welcome to my extensive p4dan headcanons i am absolutely convinced of even if i know damn well atlus probably didnt intend these implications
> 
> also !! i have not been writing much to post as i'm actually working on smth for that tatsujun zine some of you lads may have seen that is absolutely happening (this one https://tatsujunzine.tumblr.com/ )

Everyone always told Tamami that she was just like her dad. She looked enough like him, she guessed, the same mischievous grin and brown-ish hair and awful, awful jokes. The kind of jokes you’d find in a dime a dozen probably twenty year old thrift store joke book.   
  
One thing she didn’t have in common with her dad was the laugh. That kind of came as a surprise to most, as in a family of comedians with the same bad jokes and crooked smiles, wouldn’t they have the same laugh? Surprisingly, not so much. Her dad was all snorts and snrks, and she was loud, occasionally compared to some kind of anime villain. People tended to ask where she got it, the one difference in a comedian and his miniature second self, and she only ever gave a shrug and a weird smile, a vague remark about the other side of her family. (She didn’t get everything from her dad, but most people didn’t know anyone else in her family, they couldn’t see those similarities.)   
  
Eventually, she tried to distance herself from the jokes, tried to take herself more seriously, tried to make her way as an idol and not just the daughter of a comedian halfway headed down the same path who would make a half decent model if she kept her mouth shut.   
  
Sometimes, she wished her mother was still around. Tamami had never known her mother, only known of her. Much of her family insisted it was better that way. She knew she was a famous actress, seemingly well respected and well admired. Asking her parents about them didn’t get much, a vague unpleasant expression on her dad’s face, occasionally a sentiment of “well, you could meet her if you really wanted,” and Tamami’s response of “ah, never mind,” because she wasn’t sure, and somehow she knew she likely really was better off for it. She also knew that she shouldn’t ask her brother (half, really) about it, that it was better off that she’d been left with her dad.   
  
Maybe she just wished she could channel how put together and professional her estranged mother seemed, how seriously she was taken. Maybe her unstoppably loud and perhaps obnoxious laugh was proof of the fact that she felt she would never be taken seriously, or maybe it was the knee jerk reflex to make jokes (bad jokes), or her confidence and assertive, or perhaps a little aggressive, personality (her dad had always told her to be confident, that it would get her far, and she believed it). Maybe it was that she would always be associated with her dad, the fool comedian, no one else in her family was that well known, or that remarkable to anyone on the outside. Hell, most people didn’t even recognize them as related to her at first glance.   
  
Her family took her seriously, at least. Even if they weren’t always serious, even if her dad was a goof who probably couldn’t take most things seriously if his life depended on it, even if her house was sometimes like a full time comedy set. Despite it all, they did take her seriously, they didn’t write her off as some kind of no brains airhead because she made a bad joke or a botched figure of speech. It was hard to discount someone for jokes in a house full of bad comedians.   
  
And even if her family were goofs and fools and clowns, she still had her brother, or half brother, not that she often called him a half brother. He was more serious than both of her parents combined (not a hard feat, her parents nearly blew up the microwave like once a month if not more often). He was a calm, quiet fellow. A nice break from the daily chaos, a mellow cup of tea and a peaceful afternoon, or at least a reprieve from everything else.   
  
Sometimes, she wished people could see the resemblances between her and her brother. (Of course they wouldn’t, it would always be the idol who was the daughter of a jokes man, not the idol who was the sister of a graceful nobody.) The resemblances were there, they both pulled and twisted their hair, they were both shorter than her parents (the ones she knew, not her mother), they both tended to stand on their tip toes and made some of the same expressions.   
  
Once, when she was younger, she had told her dad that she thought her brother was the only one in her family that wasn’t an absolute clown. Her dad had laughed so hard she’d kind of worried he would choke on it.   
  
The next Halloween her dad had ensured the two of them were dressed up as clowns. Tamami had loved it, not that she’d admit it later. Her brother had tried to pretend he wouldn’t do it, everyone knew he would.   
  
At least, she could be comfortable with her family. She could flop down on her brother’s kitchen table with a sigh and he’d push a cup of tea into her hand with a reassurance that things would be okay. She could lay down on the couch with her dad and play shitty old racing games and make bad jokes, and he could pat her on the back and say yeah, yeah things are okay, even playing shitty racing games instead of doing anything productive at all.   
  
(And if all else failed, she could give up on idol life, and celebrity life, and maybe just real big deal job life in general, and become an eccentric hermit living with a rich person just like her other parent. That’d be fine too.)


End file.
